Jh. Matis et Tr. Kiffe, MIGRATION EFFECTS IN A STOCHASTIC MULTIPOPULATION MODEL FOR AFRICAN BEE POPULATION-DYNAMICS, Environmental and ecological statistics, 4(4), 1997, pp. 301-319
The rate of northern migration of the Africanized honey bee (AHB) in t
he United States has recently slowed dramatically. This paper investig
ates the impact of migration on the equilibrium size distributions of
a particular stochastic multipopulation model, namely a coupled logist
ic power law model. The bivariate equilibrium size distribution of the
model is derived and illustrated with parameter values used to descri
be AHB population dynamics. In the model, the difference between the e
quilibrium sizes of the two populations is a measure of the effect of
migration. The distribution of this difference may be approximated by
a normal distribution. The mean and variance parameters for the normal
are predicted accurately by a second-order regression model based on
the migration rate and the maximum size of the first population. The m
ethodology is general, and should be useful in studying the migration
effect in many other applications with one-way migration.